jimwilluk
Member
Hi there,
We'll soon be moving to a fairly rural spot in the Wye Valley, postcode NP16 6HG. To my great concern, the available broadband is veeery slow so I'm trying to hatch a plan to survive (coming from a solid 100Mbps fibre connection).
I run a small startup, working entirely from home for the foreseeable future, so a decent connection is pretty essential. I do lots of Zoom calls, most of my work tools are web-based and send fairly large files around, including occasional torrenting + lots of video streaming (Netflix etc are used regularly!)
Luckily, there is a 4G EE mast about 700 metres away (eNB ID 16921), in direct line of sight to the house. Apparently 40-50Mbps is achievable from this, though I've it also does get congested and slow down at times. O2 has barely any signal there and I think Vodafone / Three are not a huge amount better?
The plan
I have been doing some research and am thinking to get both a slow broadband connection and a 4G router and using a load balancer to help route traffic depending on what's needed. The wired broadband could do cover most day-to-day tasks (and perhaps things that require low latency?), and the 4G could take over when needing a faster connection e.g. video calling/streaming.
I'm aware load balancing is not a silver bullet, but it seems like doing anything more like channel bonding is not worth the hassle or cost.
Here's the results from BT wholesale checker, which indicates speeds of 6-11Mbps
So I'd look to get a relatively cheap 18 month fibre contract with Plusnet for ~£20/mo (5-10 Mbps estimated with guaranteed 4.2 Mbps minimum ) or something similar
For the 4G side, I'd probably look to go with EE as they seem to be the only provider that does high bandwidth/unlimited data on their network, (~£40-50/mo for 24mo contracts) though I will also check out Plusnet, BT Mobile and maybe Voda/Three, just tethering through my phone to start with.
On the hardware side, I've heard the TP Link TL-R605 is a pretty cheap and configurable load balancer. I'm also looking at getting a few TP Link EAP225's (or maybe 245's) to handle the wifi, so being able to use Omada to control them all seems handy. For the 4G connection, I've heard that the Huawei B535 or B818 are the ones to go for - the latter if money allows.
My main questions
We'll soon be moving to a fairly rural spot in the Wye Valley, postcode NP16 6HG. To my great concern, the available broadband is veeery slow so I'm trying to hatch a plan to survive (coming from a solid 100Mbps fibre connection).
I run a small startup, working entirely from home for the foreseeable future, so a decent connection is pretty essential. I do lots of Zoom calls, most of my work tools are web-based and send fairly large files around, including occasional torrenting + lots of video streaming (Netflix etc are used regularly!)
Luckily, there is a 4G EE mast about 700 metres away (eNB ID 16921), in direct line of sight to the house. Apparently 40-50Mbps is achievable from this, though I've it also does get congested and slow down at times. O2 has barely any signal there and I think Vodafone / Three are not a huge amount better?
The plan
I have been doing some research and am thinking to get both a slow broadband connection and a 4G router and using a load balancer to help route traffic depending on what's needed. The wired broadband could do cover most day-to-day tasks (and perhaps things that require low latency?), and the 4G could take over when needing a faster connection e.g. video calling/streaming.
I'm aware load balancing is not a silver bullet, but it seems like doing anything more like channel bonding is not worth the hassle or cost.
Here's the results from BT wholesale checker, which indicates speeds of 6-11Mbps
So I'd look to get a relatively cheap 18 month fibre contract with Plusnet for ~£20/mo (5-10 Mbps estimated with guaranteed 4.2 Mbps minimum ) or something similar
For the 4G side, I'd probably look to go with EE as they seem to be the only provider that does high bandwidth/unlimited data on their network, (~£40-50/mo for 24mo contracts) though I will also check out Plusnet, BT Mobile and maybe Voda/Three, just tethering through my phone to start with.
On the hardware side, I've heard the TP Link TL-R605 is a pretty cheap and configurable load balancer. I'm also looking at getting a few TP Link EAP225's (or maybe 245's) to handle the wifi, so being able to use Omada to control them all seems handy. For the 4G connection, I've heard that the Huawei B535 or B818 are the ones to go for - the latter if money allows.
My main questions
- Am I sane - Is going for a load balancer worth it for the extra redundancy and low latency/higher speed options?
- Is EE a good choice for 4G data?
- Are my hardware picks reasonable?